Things 11 and 12: LinkedIn and Academia.edu

Where Facebook is explicitly geared towards personal use, LinkedIn and Academia.edu focus on professional connections. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, and it allows you to build an online profile that features your experience and skills as well as to network with other users in a professional environment, so it provides a great way to connect with contacts from your work world. Academia.edu is essentially a sort of LinkedIn focused on the academic world, so it provides improved features for things like listing publications. Also – going back to our discussions of online presence – LinkedIn and Academia.edu profiles tend to feature high in Google searches, so a well-constructed profile can be a great way to develop your online brand.

Task
You’re not required to set up an account on either network to finish this thing, but we strongly recommend you do. You’ll need an account to explore many of the tools’ features, and it’s a good way to improve your professional presence online. Pick one (or sign up for both!) and set up an account.

Getting an account on either tool is simple, and you can register from their home pages. Make sure you fill in your profile fully. Think about the search terms you used in Thing 6 and whether you might like to include them here. Remember that these are professional networks, so your photo, taglines and activities should be those you’d be happy with employers and colleagues seeing. LinkedIn allows you to upload your CV straight into your account (with a chance to edit and format, of course!), which offers an easy way to get all your job information in.

Once you’ve signed up, try adding colleagues or other contacts. Successful social media use requires that you actively connect with people and give them something to interact with, rather than just setting up an account and leaving it. If you already have a profile but haven’t used it very much, you might think about these aspects next. You can use your Twitter and email accounts to find ‘connections’. Don’t be worried about sending requests to contacts; it’s considered fairly normal. Try taking this a step further; rather than just sending a request to connect, send a message with a question or a message.

Specific functionality:

  • LinkedIn offers groups, which allow you to join others based around a sector, place of work or other interest – for example, University of Oxford Alumni or those in this list of great groups for academics. You can also search for groups.

    LinkedIn also allows you to see who has viewed your profile, send private messages and give and ask for recommendation and skill endorsements.

  • Academia.edu has less functionality, but it is geared towards academic activities. You can write update posts on your activities, upload papers and other documents which might include ‘grey’ literature such as conference papers as well as link to your journal articles. It can also tell you how many people have viewed your profile, what keywords they used to find you, and who is following your work. You can also follow the profiles of other scholars, which is useful to keep up to date with people’s publications.

Exploring further

  • You may be interested in the Engage lunchtime course on academic profiles on Linkedin (sign up on the ITLP website).
  • Many people find LinkedIn useful as a tool for job searching. Employers can post jobs but, more importantly, your profile can give you the opportunity to ‘sell’ yourself to potential employers. Having endorsements and recommendations can help. Try asking for a recommendation for your current or previous position.

Blog post
As we mentioned, feel free to talk about all of this week’s things in one post, as they lend themselves to comparison and discussion. Did you choose to use one tool over the other? Do you think these tools offer a good way to present your professional profile, or do you prefer something else (a website, blog, etc.)?

If you use Facebook, do you feel that LinkedIn or Academia.edu are a suitable alternative space for professional activities, or do you find Facebook works just as well if not better for what you want to do?

Thing 10: Facebook

Facebook is a social network service that builds online communities of people by connecting people who share interests and/or activities. Facebook elicits mixed reactions from groups of people. Some love it, some loathe it. Even those who love it often loathe particular elements. You do not have to sign up to Facebook to complete this Thing, although we suspect many of you have already and we encourage you to do so in order to see what it’s all about. Instead, we’ll ask you to think about Facebook’s purpose and how it might be used.

Facebook is the world’s biggest social network, with over 1 billion active members. Most people use Facebook to socialise with friends and families by sharing photos, updates and news. It is less commonly used by individuals as a professional tool, but it allows you to set up ‘pages’ (rather than personal accounts) for brands, businesses, institutions, and campaigns. Both professional pages and your personal account can be powerful tools for building your online presence and staying up to date; Facebook is now the 2nd most visited website in the UK (after Google), and 60% of the population looks at FB at least once a day (2012 econsultancy Social Media Statistics Compendium). Those are impressive stats!

Task
If you’d like to join Facebook and haven’t yet, it’s fairly easy to sign up from the homepage and create a profile. You might want to take some time to explore Facebook’s privacy policies, as they’re an area of concern for some. You’ll also want to make yourself aware of the ways in which you can limit access to your posts and account (or not, depending on the purpose of your Facebook use). You can use your privacy settings to ensure that only friends or only particular people see what you put up. This is useful – and highly recommended – if you’re using Facebook in a purely personal way.

As mentioned, Facebook has both personal ‘profiles’ and organisational/institutional ‘pages’. If you’re new to Facebook, take some time to find contacts and play with its features. Facebook’s Help Center is quite good and can help explain things like the Timeline.

Whether you’re new or a seasoned user, go to the Engage: Social Media Michaelmas page and ‘Like’ it. To find our page, do a simple search in the search box at the top. When you like a page, information posted on it will appear in your news feed on your Facebook home page. The same is true of those you are friends with.

Other pages (all of which can be viewed with or without Facebook membership) that you might be interested in are:

Exploring further
If you’re really interested in creating a page for an institutional department, or in taking your Facebook use further, feel free to take a look through this presentation by Liz McCarthy of the Bodleian Libraries on ‘Facebook pages that work’ (note: if you’re signed up for Liz’s Facebook course on 1 November, this should give you an overview of the content).


Blog post

Again, feel free to talk about all of this week’s things in one post, as they lend themselves to comparison and discussion. Do you think Facebook is useful or not, and why? If you use it, how do you use it, and what do you get out of it? If you don’t want to use it, why not?

Week 4: Social networks

This week’s things are all about social networks. Engaging with social networks is an important part of online presence. Using social networks can help you connect with colleagues, peers and friends, stay up to date and get your name out there. There are hundreds of networks of various types different, some of which may be more suited for your work than others. This week we’ll focus on Facebook and LinkedIn, with a brief look at Academic.edu and mention of a few others you may wish to explore.

#23Things Twitter chat: Thursday 1 November, 3-4pm

eldh on Flickr

In Thing 7, we talked about using Twitter for live twitter chats, such as the #phdchat that happens every Wednesday. We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be running a #23Things chat next Thursday, 1 November, from 3-4pm, together with the Digital Humanities 23 Things programme at Cambridge. We’ll be talking about social media use in research and the higher education setting.

It’s super easy to participate; all you have to do is make sure you’re on Twitter between 3 and 4pm and keeping an eye on tweets with the hashtag #23things (hint: click on that link for a saved #23things search). We’ll start off the conversation with some questions for you to think about, and we’re hoping to get some of our Engage presenters to take part as well so that you can ask them about their experiences using social media for research. You can respond to questions with thoughts from your own experiences or ask questions of other participants.

If you’d like to read more about tweet chats and how to get the most out of them (don’t be afraid to ask questions! Please do introduce yourself!), take a look at this Tweet Chats 101 article.

Although the chat is #23Things-based, you don’t have to be an actual 23 Things participant to take part. We hope to ‘see’ you on Thursday!

Blogging to engage

As a follow up to Elizabeth Eva Leach’s talk yesterday, we thought we’d share the LTG Oxford case study on the blogging that Politics In Spires did to engage their audiences. Politics in Spires is an openly accessible collaborative blog between the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. The project aims to disseminate research and provide open educational resources, and the blog plays a key role in its work.

 

Blogging and Twitter for Academia – Presentation slides

Today’s lunchtime Engage seminar was given by Elizabeth Eva Leach, Tutorial Fellow in Music at Oxford, on ‘Blogging and Twitter for Academia’. Elizabeth uses her blog to disseminate research and interact with researchers and students, and she’s a great believer in using Twitter to encourage scholarly exchange (and talk to students!).

Elizabeth focused on the benefits and advantages of using social media – particularly blogging and Twitter – for bringing together teaching and research. Those of you looking at Twitter this week (or just interested in general) might be interested in her slides – though short, they have a lot of great links and ideas!

Thing 9: Storify and other tools

We’ve covered quite a lot this week already, so this final post is a bit more of a fun one. We’ll take a quick look at tools that let you aggregate and share information from other social media and online sources, starting with Storify.

Storify is a way of bringing together content from across the web to create ‘social stories’, which you can then share. It’s an easy way to combine different media on a particular subject – say, a conference or an event – in a nice, embeddable format. As an example, here’s a simple one I made about the engage and 23 Things programmes, with tweets, blog posts and a few others.

You can sign into Storify using your Facebook or Twitter account (or your email if that’s easier). Once you’re signed in, it’s easy to get started. Use the blue button at the top to ‘Create a story’. You’ll be asked to add a title and an optional description, then you can use the icons in the right-hand-side column to search various media (Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc.) for content. You can drag any items you want to include over onto your story on the left, and drag them around to reorder as you like (if you want more info, Storify provides detailed instructions). When you’re happy with what you’ve made, click ‘Publish’, and you’re done! You can get a link to embed your story on a website, share it via social media or email, or simply give others the link to visit.

There are other tools that allow you to aggregate and publish information from various sources. Paper.li, for example, allows you to create online newspapers of stories and links (there’s a great quick guide on the paper.li website). Scoop.it allows you to do the same thing – see this great post on using it).

Blog post
Spend some time exploring these tools and stories/papers generated by them. Compare them – can you see them being used for different purposes? Is one easier to read then the other? What might you use them for? Tag your post ‘Thing 9’.

Thing 8: RSS Feeds

What are RSS feeds?
RSS (Rich Site Summary – often called Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format that provides the full text of web content together with links to the original source.

Why use them?
RSS feeds save you time and energy by bringing together articles and information and allowing you to read them in one place – the information comes to you! Many websites and blogs allow you to set up RSS feeds for their content. RSS feeds are also commonly available from databases which allow you to subscribe to feeds for journal articles on a specific topic. In this way you can be alerted whenever new content is added to your favourite websites or when a new issue of an e-journal is published.

RSS feeds are also useful if you run your own website. We’ve provided a link on this blog, for example, to an RSS feed that lets you subscribe to our content.

Task
To set up RSS feeds, you need to sign up to a feed reader or aggregator – software that checks RSS feeds and displays updated content. There are many available. Free web-based readers, e.g. Google Reader, let you check RSS feeds from any computer whereas downloadable desktop clients, e.g. FeedDemon, let you store them on your own computer. You are free to choose your own, but for this post we’ll focus on Google Reader as it’s one of the most common.

Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see your Reader homepage. Down the left-hand side is a navigation panel, and on the right you’ll see the main section, where the content will appear. Google has probably displayed some posts to help you get started.

Google Reader page

Google Reader home

Now that you have a Reader account, try subscribing to the RSS feed for this blog:

  • In the blog’s sidebar (on the righthand side), you’ll see the heading ‘Subscribe by RSS’. Click on the icon below.
  • You should be taken to a page or a box with a few options; select ‘Google Reader’.
  • You will be taken into your Google Reader account. You may have to click ‘Subscribe’ again. Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll see 23 Things for Research under the Subscriptions heading. In the main section of the page you will see the latest update from the blog. To view previous updates scroll down the main section.

Most blogs and many websites will allow you to subscribe via RSS, even if they don’t have a specific button or link for it. Many web browsers will offer a subscribe button up in the address bar or the bookmarks menu. If you don’t see a subscription link, copy and paste the feed’s URL into the ‘Subscribe’ box in your Reader. See Google’s help page for more info on subscribing.

You should aim to subscribe to at least five other feeds. You may want to add some of the other 23 Things bloggers, or perhaps your favourite news blog or site.

Exploring further

  • Explore tools that allow you manage subscriptions. In Google Reader, there are options at the top and bottom of each item that allow you to star, share or tag the item. You can also use the ‘Manage Subscriptions’ option (find it by clicking the little arrow to the right of the Subscriptions list in the left-hand column) to categorize your feeds with folders. Managing your folders can be particularly helpful if you subscribe to a large number of feeds.
  • Add an extension to your browser to make subscribing to feeds even easier. Try this one for Chrome, this one for Firefox, and this one for Internet Explorer.

Blog post
Do you view RSS feeds as a useful tool in keeping up to date? Do you think you will use them in future? Tag your post ‘Thing 8’.

Thing 7: Twitter

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows you to publish short updates of up to 140 characters. You can follow other users to subscribe to their updates. All updates from users you follow appear in your own feed, so it’s easy to see them.

Why use Twitter?
It’s a common misconception that Twitter is all about people tweeting what they had for breakfast (or their latest date, or their sleeping habits, etc.). Although there are certainly people who only use Twitter for these things, the reality is that most users prefer to use it to ask questions, network or share relevant information and interesting links. It can be a powerful tool, both for building professional contacts and for staying up to date in your area. There are also many organisations and researchers using Twitter creatively to stay in touch with their students or contacts. You can use Twitter to tweet your work, ask questions, crowdsource data and reach new audiences, as well as to publicise events and news, get feedback and get/answer questions in the classroom. You might use Twitter for any of the following (via #DH23):

  • Publicising your work, such as a new blog post or article.
  • Disseminating news about your professional activities, such as attending a conference
  • Commenting on news in your field or HE in general
  • Sharing interesting context you find, through tweeting URLs (shortened with services such as tinyurl or bit.ly to leave you more characters to comment with) or through retweeting others’ tweets (marked RT to acknowledge that it’s not your original content, or MT if you change it slightly)
  • News updates (from blogs such as those of other 23 Things participants, InsideHigherEd or publications such as the THES or Guardian Higher Education),
  • Opportunities and news from professional or research bodies such as Vitae or the UK Research Staff Association or funding bodies such as the Research Councils UK or AHRC). These might include calls for papers, funding or jobs.
  • Activities in Departments, Libraries and other research centres. You can find out about seminars and conferences this way.
  • Livetweeting at conferences (either participating in the conference audience ‘backchannel’ or to get a flavour of discussions and speakers to look up, and participate remotely by asking questions, if you can’t attend in person)
  • Asking questions, and answering those of others.
  • Crowdsourcing and finding research collaborators or participants
  • Finding and contacting individual scholars in your field who might be able to recommend readings, answer questions or suggest opportunities that would be interesting for you.
  • Enhancing some of the more informal communication that occurs in the academic world such as networking at conferences and seminars, bumping into colleagues at your own and other institutions or moral support from peers.
  • Peer support
  • A bit of light relief: follow @PhDcomics

Some basic Twitter vocabulary
(see the Twitter Glossary for more)

Task
If you already have a Twitter account, skip ahead to Exploring Further. If not, follow these easy steps to get one set up.

  1. Go to http://twitter.com/ and use the sign up box to get started. Follow the steps to create an account (if you want more help, Twitter provides detailed step-by-step instructions). You may want to think about your online presence when you decide on a user name. Do you want to be consistent across your various accounts?
  2. Once you have created your account, you’ll be taken to your Twitter homepage where there are further steps to work through to get you started, e.g. updating your profile to include a short biography or adding a profile picture. You can come back to these steps at any time using the link to Settings in the top right corner of the screen. We recommend you leave the privacy box unchecked so that others can see your tweets and communicate with you.

    Twitter profile page

    The Twitter profile page for the Bodleian Libraries.

  3. Now post your first update! Click on the status box on the top left where it says ‘Compose new Tweet…’. Write a comment – maybe something about your participation in 23 Things. As you type you will see the number in the top right of the box decrease; this tells you how many characters you have left.. Leave enough space to add the hashtag #oxengage at the end. This is the hashtag for the Engage and 23 Things programmes and will allow others to search for all #oxengage tweets. Once you’re done, click ‘update’. You’ll see your tweet appear in your timeline.
  4. Find people to follow.
    1. Search by name or twitter handle in the search box. Try looking for and following @bodleianlibs and @ltgoxford.
    2. There’s also a follow button on every user’s profile page.

Exploring further

  • Twitter hashtags offer a great way of following conferences – either by finding out about and interacting with those at a conference with you, or by hearing details of a conference you were unable to attend. Take a look and see if a conference of interest to you has/had a hashtag, and then see what sort of tweets come up under that hashtag (keep in mind that Twitter may not show results before a certain date).
  • Another way to use hashtags is to set up real time chats – for instance, the Guardian Higher Education chats each Friday, or the #phdchats on Wednesdays. These are usually held at specific times each week or month, and you can participate by tweeting your comments or questions with the appropriate hashtag. Take a look at the tweets around last week’s Guardian HE chat (conveniently on academic blogging – search for #HElivechat) or #phdchat to get an idea. There’s an open Google doc that lists over 300 live chats and their dates/times; they cover all sorts of topics.
  • Use lists! Twitter allows you to make lists of other Twitter users, so you can categorize people in helpful ways. You can also follow other Twitter users’ lists. @ltgoxford has some great lists of people and departments in the University who are on Twitter
  • Set up and save searches for relevant topics, people or events in your field.
  • Take a look at a few Twitter clients. Tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Crowdbooster allow you to schedule tweets ahead of time and track retweets, reach and other stats.

Blog post
Think about Twitter and how you think it may or may not be relevant to you. Do you feel it’s useful? Why or why not? Tag your post ‘Thing 7’.

Further Reading:

This week: Current awareness

(Image via Leo Reynolds on Flickr)

Week 4’s theme is current awareness, and we’ll be exploring ways to keep up to date in your field as well as to share information with colleagues and peers (and the wider world!). We’ll be focusing on Twitter, RSS feeds, Storify and a few other tools. Some of these allow you to ‘extend’ your network, others allow you to organise and gather (or share) information. If you are already using or want to find out about other tools, do let us know!

Please note that you are welcome to combine this week’s Things into one or multiple blog posts, if you feel that it works better for you than three separate posts.